Elogio a la Sonrisa

Giap's Last Day At The Ironing Board Factory

In 1975, a seven-months pregnant Vietnamese refugee, Giap, escapes Saigon in a boat and, within weeks, finds herself working on an assembly line in Seymour, Indiana. 35 years later, her aspiring filmmaker son, Tony, decides to document her final day of work at the last ironing board factory in America.

Bubot Niyar

Paper Dolls follows the lives of transgender migrant workers from the Philippines who work as health care providers for elderly Orthodox Jewish men and perform as drag queens during their spare time. It also delves into the lives of societal outcasts who search for freedom and acceptance.

Shipbuilder

This film recreates the true story of Tom Sukanen, an eccentric Finnish immigrant who homesteaded in Saskatchewan in the 1920s and 1930s. Sukanen spent ten years building and moving overland a huge iron ship that was to carry him back to his native Finland. The ship never reached water.

Choc migratoire

Home Feeling: Struggle for a Community

This feature documentary takes us to the heart of the Jane-Finch "Corridor" in the early 1980s. Covering six square blocks in Toronto's North York, the area readily evokes images of vandalism, high-density subsidized housing, racial tension, despair and crime. By focusing on the lives of several of the residents, many of them black or members of other visible minorities, the film provides a powerful view of a community that, contrary to its popular image, is working towards a more positive future.

Brésiliens comme moi

The encounter with a growing, and mostly undocumented, brazilian community allows us to bear witness to its energy, its vivacity, and its diversity. This film attempts to work for a larger acceptance of foreigners in their land of exile.

Non Scordarti

Jeronimo

Born to Korean immigrant parents freed from indentured servitude in early twentieth century Mexico, Jerónimo Lim Kim joins the Cuban Revolution with his law school classmate Fidel Castro and becomes an accomplished government official in the Castro regime, until he rediscovers his ethnic roots and dedicates his later life to reconstructing his Korean Cuban identity. After Jerónimo's death, younger Korean Cubans recognize his legacy, but it is not until they are presented with the opportunity to visit South Korea that questions about their mixed identity resurface.

God Grew Tired of Us

Filmmaker Christopher Quinn observes the ordeal of three Sudanese refugees -- Jon Bul Dau, Daniel Abul Pach and Panther Bior -- as they try to come to terms with the horrors they experienced in their homeland, while adjusting to their new lives in the United States.

Spellbound

This documentary follows 8 teens and pre-teens as they work their way toward the finals of the Scripps Howard national spelling bee championship in Washington D.C.

Mamma har varit direktör

The story about how Britt-Marie took back the brush factory from her husband’s cruel brother at the end of the fifties was one of Malin’s childhood fairy tales. Britt-Marie is now 95 years old and trying to set the story straight with the help of her daughter behind the camera. Together they outline a powerful life story that is slowly fading away.

Liquor Store Dreams

So Yun Um’s debut feature is a moving portrait of two Korean American children of liquor store owners reconciling their dreams with those of their immigrant parents, against the backdrop of struggles for racial equity in Los Angeles.

Massacre River

Pikilina is a Dominican-born woman of Haitian descent. Racial and political violence erupts when the country of her birth, the Dominican Republic, reverses birthright citizenship and she and 200,000 others are left stateless.

2 oder 3 Dinge, die ich von ihm weiß

What would your family reminiscences about dad sound like if he had been an early supporter of Hitler’s, a leader of the notorious SA and the Third Reich’s minister in charge of Slovakia, including its Final Solution? Executed as a war criminal in 1947, Hanns Ludin left behind a grieving widow and six young children, the youngest of whom became a filmmaker. It's a fascinating, maddening, sometimes even humorous look at what the director calls "a typical German story." (Film Forum)

Belle Vie

A much loved Parisian-style bistro located in Los Angeles between a thriving McDonalds and KFC, Belle Vie is owned and operated by the charming and hopeful Vincent Samarco, who struggles to adapt, survive and keep the bistro alive in the midst of a pandemic that has ravaged small businesses everywhere.

Spijtmoeders

What if you love your child, but are unhappy in your role as a mother? Spijtmoeders is a documentary film about mothers who, if they could make the choice again, would rather not be mothers. Three women talk about their struggles with motherhood, the shame and guilt they feel, and the high expectations society places on them. The fear of judgment from others is great: what if people think that they are not a good mother, that they do not take good care of their child? What if they think they don't love their child? The mothers are represented by hyper-realistic dolls, but their voices are real.

Evaporating Borders

Evaporating Borders is a poetically photographed and rendered film on tolerance and search for identity. Told through 5 vignettes portraying the lives of migrants on the island of Cyprus, it passionately weaves themes of displacement and belonging.

Soita äidille

Calling Mother is about the moments when you just have to call your mum. It is a compilation of phone calls made by different people to their mothers. Film follows the lifespan of a human being from youth to adulthood, a child changing from a dependent to a caretaker. Phone calls are connected by images of an old telephone center and a story of a young mother who doesn’t have a mother to call.

Terry's Little Village

Terry Wilson is a 70-year-old lifelong resident of Meadowvale Village, Ontario's first heritage district. As development looms and begins to destroy Terry's favourite place in the world, he recreates pieces of history in his backyard, crafting an oasis where it feels like nothing has changed. A beautiful tribute to his childhood, his mother, and his town, Terry passionately fights to preserve history in a world that's too anxious for change.